Desserts

Lychee ice cream

Summer is officially here and even though summer comes with many sweaty woes, but as my fellow blogger Gayatri pointed out summer does come with its biggest perks- stone fruits! Mangoes, plums, lychees, cherries, peaches and the like. Which invariably means- pies, cobblers, jams and of course ice cream!

In my last post I mentioned about our trip to the indian store. Besides getting fenugreek leaves, I also brought home some lychees.

I took some time to like lychees. Probably because they require a lot of effort to eat. Peeling the skin and then spitting out the seed. As kids, our summer vacations were always at my grandparents house in Jalandhar, Punjab. My cousin sister would also spend her summer there with us. She and I have a ten year age difference and I looked up to her as a big sister, which meant I would imitate her habits quite a bit. If she ate musk melon, cut in half like a bowl, that’s how I started eating it. She is also the reason why I started eating lychees. She loves them and my grandfather would stock the fridge with lots of lychees during season. So when she got some for herself, she would share with me and even though I found it a lot of effort I slowly started eating and then eventually liking them.

Nowadays I find lychees refreshing, and don’t mind the hassle of peeling the skin off. In fact its what makes eating them more fun, or at least thats what I think now.

I had some leftover yolks from my hazelnut macaron making session, and the plan was to make ice cream with those yolks to beat this summer heat.

In India a brand call naturals makes one of the best natural fruit ice cream and they have lychee flavor which I really love. Inspired by that I decided to make lychee ice cream. I used David Levobitz recipe for the creme anglaise and added freshly made lychee puree to the custard base before freezing. My ice cream maker is in india so I made the ice cream without one, and still got pretty decent creamy results.

In case you want to make this eggless, you can. My mom used my mango kulfi recipe and instead of mango puree added lychee puree and she said it worked really well.

Lychee ice cream

Recipe Type: Ice Cream

Author: Shumaila

Serves: 6 scoops

Light and fresh lychee ice cream is a summer favorite of mine. You can make this recipe without an ice cream maker like I did.

Ingredients

Creme Anglaise: (I halved the ingredients of the original recipe because I had only 3 yolks, but feel free to double)
1/2 cup milk
70 gms sugar
1 cup heavy cream
pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla
3 large egg yolks
a bunch of lychees, pitted and pureed (reserve a few lychees after pitting them and coarsely chop them instead of pureeing them- I had about a cup of puree)

Instructions

Mix the milk, cream, salt and sugar in a medium sauce pan. Heat the mixture over a low heat until it starts bubbling along the edge. Do not let boil and stir constantly to prevent the milk mixture from sticking to the bottom. Take off heat.
In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour in the hot mixture into the egg yolks, while whisking. Do not pour all of the mixture, lest you want scrambled eggs. Once the eggs are tempered scrape the warmed egg mixture back into the saucepan and set over medium heat.
Return the warmed egg yolks in to the sauce pan, and cook over medium-low heat whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens, or till it coats the back of the spoon.
Strain the ice cream mixture through a sieve into a clean bowl set in a ice bath and chill. Add the vanilla. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight.
Stir in the lychee puree and coarsely chopped lychee pieces. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. In case you do not have an ice cream maker, transfer the mixture into a freezer safe container. As the mixture starts to freeze around the edges, remove it and mix it. Repeat this 4-5 times, every hour or so till mixture is mostly frozen. If your freezer is big enough, it helps to keep the ice cream in the blender container for this part and transferring the mixture only when the mixture is mostly smooth and frozen.

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